“Look at this, Eric. From when we were kids.” A Walkman, complete with the foam-covered earphones that never stayed on.
Eric gave a small grin. “Yeah, that was Hunter’s. He won it at his grandmother’s Christmas bingo.”
Casey waited for more explanation.
“Ellen’s mom gathers garage sale type stuff, or things she gets from the local thrift store, or Dollar Store. The cousins—there are six of them, counting Ellen’s two—play Bingo, and when they get a bingo they can pick something from the pile. Hunter picked the CD player, but stopped using it when he got an iPod for his birthday. I guess…I guess Ellen never bothered to get rid of it.”
Casey looked down at the player. It sure brought back memories. Saving her baby-sitting money until she had enough to buy her own, the pride she felt leaving the store. The first time she dropped it, and from then on it would skip… She popped the player open, somehow expecting to see a CD of one of her old favorites from her youth. The Cars, or Huey Lewis and the News.
“Eric.” Her voice sounded strangely calm.
She held up the CD player, showing him the contents. The CD-Rom, a generic one from the store, had no title. Nothing scribbled on it in black sharpie. But it wasn’t a regular CD, and if Hunter had a bootleg music CD, he most likely would’ve made sure he knew what was on it.
“Eric?”
He and Casey both jerked up at the sound. Someone else was in the house.
Casey took the CD from the player and shoved the Walkman into its carrying case, tossing it back into the corner of the closet. She closed the door and nodded to Eric.
He left the room. “Yeah?”
“I saw your car out there.”
It was a man’s voice, and Casey thought she recognized it.
“What are you doing here so late at night, son?”
Great. It really was the chief of police. Casey looked around for a CD cover, but finding nothing shoved the CD itself into the waistband at the back of her pants, pulling her shirt over it.
“Just looking around, Denny. I couldn’t sleep.”
“Uh-huh.” It was quiet for a few moments before Casey heard movement toward Hunter’s room. Chief Reardon filled the doorway—as much as a guy his size could fill it—and regarded Casey with a mixture of surprise and resignation. “And what are you doing here?”
“Keeping me company.” Eric pushed gently past the chief and came to stand beside Casey. “It’s not easy coming here, you know.”
“Yeah. I know.” He put his hands on his hips and looked around the room. “And the reason you’re in Hunter’s room?”
“He wanted me to get something. Mail it to him.” Eric’s voice was surprisingly even.
“Really? And what was that?”
“His Pokemon game.” Eric snatched the game disk from the desktop. “He took his GameBoy, but left this by mistake.”
Casey tried to look unconcerned, and prayed desperately that Hunter really had taken his GameBoy, and it wasn’t sitting in full view on the desk.
“I see. So you’re about done here, then?” The chief kept his eyes on Casey as he talked, the message in them clear.
“We’re done,” Eric said. “Thanks for checking in.”
“Neighbors called. Said someone was over here looking around. They thought it strange that the person didn’t turn on the lights, but seemed to be going around with just a flashlight.”
Casey looked steadily at the chief.
“Well, as you can see,” Eric said. “We’ve got the lights full on.”
“Yes. But it makes me wonder who else might’ve been here.”
Eric made a non-committal noise. “That is curious.” He turned to Casey. “Well, shall we go? Now that we got what we came for?” His eyes were asking the question—Did she have it?
Casey nodded. “Sure. Let’s go.”
Chief Reardon stood aside to let Eric pass, but moved his shoulder back into the doorway when Casey approached. “Interesting to see you here, Ms. Smith.”
“And you.”
“I suppose you remember our conversation earlier today.”
“Of course.”
“That’s good. I wouldn’t want you to think I forget about folks who are new to town.”
Casey met his eyes. “Oh, I would never think that. Chief.”
He held her gaze for a few more moments before turning so she could pass. Eric looked at her with some confusion, but she gave a small shake of her head, moving past him toward the front door.
“See you later, Denny,” Eric said.
Casey didn’t hear the chief reply. And she didn’t look back. All she wanted to do was get far out of his line of sight.
Chapter Thirty
“Okay,” Eric said, driving away from Ellen’s house. “I am officially freaked out.”
Casey didn’t answer, feeling enough the same way she was afraid her voice would show it. Instead, she closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing, trying to ignore the fact that she was, once again, in a car.
“You have the CD?”
She opened her eyes and pulled it out from the back of her pants, wiping it on her shirt. “Got it. Shall we listen to it?”
He looked at the disk, licking the sides of his mouth. “I guess. That’s what we got it for, right? And maybe…” He hesitated. “Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it really is an album—or a movie—Hunter got off the Internet.”
“Sure, it could be.” But Casey knew it wasn’t. She could feel it. She slid it into the CD player.
Nothing.
“So it’s not audio,” Eric said. “It’s a DVD. We have to watch it.”
Casey ejected it from the player. “Where should we go?” She really didn’t want to go to Eric’s place, just the two of them, this late at night. “How about your mom’s place? They’ve got that great TV.”
He grimaced.
“Oh,” Casey said. “Another present from your dad?”
“Irritating, but true. And I have to admit Mom and Rosemary have really enjoyed it.”
“Unlike the Orion.”
He grinned. “What Orion?”
The lights were still on at The Nesting Place, and the women came hurtling into the foyer at the sound of the front door.
“Oh, thank goodness you’re all right,” Rosemary said, crushing Casey in a hug. “You were taking so long. And you.” She pointed at Eric. “What are you doing here?”
Lillian hung back from the group, her eyes shadowed, waiting for Eric’s response.
He cleared his throat. “Um, Casey and I sort of…met up…at Ellen’s house.”
Rosemary frowned. “You went there.”
“Yes.”
“On your own.”
“Yes.”
She shook her head. “And you found Casey going through Ellen’s things.”
“Well…” He glanced at Casey. “She sort of scared the crap out of me, but I’m over it now.”
Casey held up the DVD. “We found something.”
The women’s eyes locked onto the disk.
“We think,” Eric said.
“Well,” Rosemary said. “Let’s watch it. Or is it something to listen to?”
“Watch, we think.”
“Then come along.”
Together they trooped into the parlor, where Rosemary held out a hand for the disk, then ceremoniously placed it in the DVD player. She remained standing, her eyes on the screen. Casey stood beside her, with Eric on the other side of the TV. Lillian alone sat, but pulled the ottoman close so she could be within their little circle.
An image came suddenly onto the screen. HomeMaker. A wide-angle of the parking lot. The picture, a date at the bottom which said the footage was two weeks old, narrowed slowly, coming to rest on the first row of cars.
“There’s Karl’s car,” Eric said. “And Yvonne’s. And that one…it’s mine.”
“Whose are the other two?” Casey asked.
“Don’t know.” He looked down at Lillian, but she shook her head.
“Wait.” Casey pointed at the car on the far right, one of the two unidentified ones. “There’s somebody in there. Two people.”
They all leaned toward the screen, as if that would help them to see more clearly.
Rosemary let out a sound of exasperation. “It’s impossible to tell who it is.”